explorations of mindful fatherhood

Quarter Naked

My son was forced to suffer through several hours of football this past Sunday, as we watched the conference championships. He’s a reluctant football fan, and gets quite squirrelly as the game persists. His mind wanders and he begins asking random questions. Midway through the second quarter he asked,

“Why are the cheerleaders a quarter naked?”

Good question, I thought, but chickened out and punted it to my wife. She responded with something to the effect of, “People think it’s sexy.”

This is the tricky thing with 2nd graders: they’re inquisitive about all sorts of stuff, and the older they get, the more they begin noticing adult things in the world around them. In the case of my 2nd grader’s questions, the answers are sometimes so complex that I’m flooded with a multitude of ways to answer. To respond to his question about “quarter naked” cheerleaders, do I talk about the ways in which women were historically disallowed from playing sports and relegated to cheering on the sidelines? Do I talk about the long history of high school culture in the US, in which the most popular and therefore most attractive girls are chosen as cheerleaders? Do I tell him about how grown men are so similar to high school boys that we continue the tradition of cheerleading in our major sports institutions? Do I mention that one of the few sports his dad enjoys watching is famous for its misogyny?

The whole “sexy” thing has been an interesting term to navigate while parenting. It’s a word he knows because it’s bandied about in every day life so readily. One of the ways he’s exposed to “sexy” things is when people kiss in movies or books. It’s been interesting reading the Harry Potter series to him, because as the characters get older, they appropriately deal with more adolescent topics, like flirtation, jealousy, and kissing. It’s been interesting noticing how my son’s reactions (and mine) have evolved over time. At first, reading about or seeing kisses in the movies was simply met with silent confusion and a comical look. At some point, the awkward silence was broken with his exclamation of “Awkward!” We’re a family of comics, so the break in tension with this comic zinger was often hilarious and welcomed.

And then, something switched to make him say, “Inappropriate!” My wife and I discerned that it must have had to do with the fact that Harry and Cho Chang get all kissy-faced in school. As a 2nd grader, my son was aware that there’s appropriate and inappropriate school behavior, and kissing obviously wasn’t something (2nd grade) students were supposed to do in school! We weren’t keen on that one, since we didn’t want him thinking it was necessarily “inappropriate” for teenagers to kiss. Thankfully, the reaction evolved to the less rule-based response: “Ooh la la!” I believe that one came from my wife, during Harry Potter’s run-in with the lovely French witches of Beauxbatons Academy. So, that’s now the comic relief when something “sexy” is going on. If someone kisses in a book or movie, if someone’s wearing a slinky dress, if teenagers go out on a date, one of us proclaims “ooh la la” and move along.

I’m good with “ooh la la’s” for now. It’s baby steps for me, until we reach middle school. Then, quarter naked cheerleaders will be the least of my worries, I’m sure.